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What is the Starter Home Initiative?

Posted 29 January 2016 by Keith Osborne


What is the Starter Home Initiative?

The Starter Home Initiative is a government scheme which was announced in December 2014 by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. It pledged to make 100,000 starter homes available at an affordable price in order to help first-time buyers onto the property ladder. Who is it for? This government initiative is available to first-time buyers under the age of 40 – as long as you fit this criteria and are able to raise enough capital (deposit plus mortgage) for a starter home, you can qualify for this scheme. Homes that qualify to be part of the scheme must be valued at £250,000 or less, or £450,000 or less in London. How does it work? In order to create these discounts, the government will relieve property developers of certain levies and charges that they would normally have to pay to acquire planning permission to build homes on specific land sites. When building on large housing sites, these charges can add thousands of pounds to the cost of each home at the development (£15,000 each, according to government figures). By relaxing these charges, properties can be built at a fraction of the cost, making the price of the homes more affordable to homebuyers. With the Starter Home Initiative properties, the government aims to give first-time buyers a saving of at least 20%.

Is it worth it? The benefits of being part of this scheme are that you can get a significant discount off the price of your first home, allowing you to get onto the property ladder sooner and with more ease than you might have anticipated. Although the homes are being sold cheaply, the quality of the homes will be ensured by world-famous architects, Sir Terry Farrell and Sir Quinlan Terry, who are on board with the project to make sure the homes will still be well built to suitable designs. You are slightly limited with this scheme by the fact that these starter homes cannot be resold or let for a fixed period of five years after the sale; this is to stop people from purchasing the properties at a low price and selling them at full market value. Plus, there is no set date as to when these properties will be available; for each property, they must go through planning and the construction process.

However, in the recent Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne announced that the housing budget was being doubled and that 400,000 starter homes will be built in the UK by the end of the decade.

Who is building these starter homes?

A number of large and small housebuilders have already signed up to participate in the Starter Home Initiative. When homes start to become available through the scheme, WhatHouse? will indicate where they are available on our listings.

* Affleck Property Services

* Avant Homes

* Badger Building (E Anglia)

* Barratt Homes

* Beattie Passiv

* Bellway

* Bloor Homes

* Border Craft Homes

* CALA Homes

* Capital and Centric

* Carr & Carr (Builders)

* Countryside

* Crest Nicholson

* Development Securities

* Entrench

* Farnham Bros (Youldon & Barrett)

* Grainger

* Humber Construction Brick Baron

* John Collis Group

* Keigar Homes

* Linden/Galliford Try

* Miller Homes

* Mount Anvil

* N London Construction

* Persimmon

* REB South West

* Redrow

* Swale Valley Construction

* Swallow Hill Homes

* Swan Homes (East Midlands)

* Taylor Wimpey

* Tilbury Projects

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